James Jackson: We will always have bullies

Friday

Aug 24, 2012 at 12:01 AMAug 24, 2012 at 10:22 AM

What exactly is a bully? Merriam-Webster defines a bully as “a blustering browbeating person; especially: one habitually cruel to others who are weaker.” Most of us have a generic image of a bully. As children, there were three types of people in school. There were the bullies, the victims of bullies, and the bystanders that watched. Every once in a while, one of these bystanders would come to the aid of the victim, but that was rare and often resulted in becoming a target of the bullies as well. Most of us like to think that as we grow older, experience and understanding help us leave this childish behavior behind. Unfortunately, most of us would be wrong. We only become larger versions of those children.

James Jackson

What exactly is a bully? Merriam-Webster defines a bully as “a blustering browbeating person; especially: one habitually cruel to others who are weaker.” Most of us have a generic image of a bully. As children, there were three types of people in school. There were the bullies, the victims of bullies, and the bystanders that watched. Every once in a while, one of these bystanders would come to the aid of the victim, but that was rare and often resulted in becoming a target of the bullies as well. Most of us like to think that as we grow older, experience and understanding help us leave this childish behavior behind. Unfortunately, most of us would be wrong. We only become larger versions of those children.

There are many theories for what motivates bullies. It could be fear driven by an unbalanced personality. It could be bad parenting. Many times, especially in adulthood, the motivation could be a deep-seated discomfort with anything or anyone that is different from themselves or how they were taught to view the world. In adulthood, these types of bullies are often the most dangerous because of the potential power they can wield in groups. This is nothing new for humanity. In antiquity, these groups would stone other people or throw them in an arena for wild animals to mangle and kill. For a good century or more in Europe, Catholics killed Protestants because they viewed the world differently, and Protestants did the same. Both sides burned innocent women at the stake because they were “different.” Europeans and Americans enslaved and murdered untold numbers of Africans because they were different and weak. The barbaric violence of the bully is, at least at this phase of our history, past us. But the bully is still there.

In the 1950s, we saw the bully at work in places like Little Rock, where they screamed obscenities at innocent children trying to attend a school that was previously “all white.” In the 1990s we saw a new form of bullying in the form of political correctness. While we certainly needed to progress past some of the offensive language and names of the past, political correctness quickly spun out of control and the “pc” bully began to dissect and punish any “offensive” verbal gaffe or misunderstanding with the veracity of a fascist propaganda machine. This carried over into the early 2000s when sensitivities and nationalism went into overdrive after the tragic events of 9/11. Anyone that looked different, especially a perceived Muslim, were immediately suspect by previously friendly neighbors. Questioning the administration’s execution of the war that followed was met with hostile accusations of fellow Americans as “unpatriotic” and having their status as a “true American” questioned because they held differences of opinion. Nothing exemplifies this better than the laughable move by Congress to start referring to french fries as “freedom” fries because France refused to support the misguided war in Iraq.

In this new decade, the bully has changed its target to immigrants and the gay population. The immigrant issue is nothing new. Each wave of immigration in this country has been met with its share of bullies. This century the target is the Latin American immigrant. I saw an amusing photo that put this in perspective. It is a photo of a Native American and the wording says “Immigrants threatening your way of life? That must be tough.” As the gay civil rights movement continues to move forward, it is being met with the same style of bully that we saw on the schoolhouse steps in Little Rock from decades past.

The bully will never go away. It is unfortunately a part of human nature. And with the bully, we will always have the victim and the bystanders that allow it to happen. The great thing about America is that we have an abundance of those who choose to step out of this pattern and come to the aid of the victim(s). This could be the columnist that receives death threats from angry readers. It could be the mother that chooses her gay son over her beloved church that advocates concentration camps for homosexuals. It could be the person that defends Christmas nativity scenes on courthouse lawns from the oppressive nature of misguided politically correct policies. In the grand scheme of things, this is the person that will stand out in our memory and in our history because in the end, he represents the exceptionalism that makes a “true” American.

James Jackson writes for The Sun-Times in Heber Springs, Ark. He can be reached at schoolnews@thesuntimes.com.

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